U.S. Pat. No. 4,368,018 (hereinafter referred to as the '018; Inventors: Rees, et al; Assignee: Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd.) discloses a transporter for transporting articles or inserts in connection with a molding machine. Inadvertently during normal operation, a molded article may become jammed within a mold, and/or may not cooperate with a material pick-up head of the transporter. A molding machine operator must then manually retrieve the molded article jammed in the mold. On occasion, the operator would have to detach (that is, mechanically disengage) the transporter from the mold, and then separate the mold in order to gain access to the jammed molded article. Disadvantageously, time taken to disconnect and reconnect the transporter may undesirably increase the downtime of the molding machine and thereby lower throughput efficiency (that is, the number of parts molded per minute).
U.S. Pat. No. 5,037,597 (hereinafter referred to as the '597; Inventors: McGinley et al; Assignee: Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd.) discloses a swing chute system for removing articles from a mold. The swing chute cannot be moved in and out of the mold until the mold has been sufficiently translated apart. Disadvantageously, when the article becomes jammed within the mold, the operator would have to detach the swing chute from the mold and/or molding machine in order to retrieve the jammed molded article.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,589,840 (hereinafter referred to as the '840; Inventor: Schad; Assignee: Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd.) discloses side chutes that are linearly translatable into and out of a mold area and are configured to pick up and remove ejected molded articles away from a mold. An operator may selectively move the side chutes over to areas outside of both sides of the mold. Disadvantageously, floor space that is taken up by the chutes moving over to these areas will reduce the amount of available floor space that could have been assigned to other production equipment.